By Dean Long, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Federation of Travel Agents
It’s been three long years since we celebrated together but this month we will finally celebrate the very best in Australia’s Travel Sector at our National Travel Industry Awards.
NTIA 2022, which is happening on 15 October in Sydney thanks to the support of all our sponsors including our major sponsor Singapore Airlines, sold out very quickly due to the industry-wide pent-up demand to be face-to-face for a real-life celebration.
After all we have been through, and continue to go through with the ongoing challenges of skills and labour shortages, NTIA is an important opportunity for us all to forget the challenges for a brief moment in time and to let our hair down for a long-overdue get-together.
We are of course grateful for Travel Daily and TravelBulletin’s ongoing support of NTIA as well.
This month also sees the Federal Government hand down its first Budget on October 25. AFTA will be in Canberra that week continuing our advocacy across a range of important issues.
Our lobbying priorities continue to be the areas that need to be addressed for you to thrive. There’s the next phase of the Government’s Jobs and Skills white paper and our case for greater support for trainees and apprenticeships in our sector so that we have a healthy pipeline of emerging talent. We need to keep pushing for a number of policy initiatives that we believe will support traveller confidence and grow awareness of the benefit of choosing an ATAS-accredited travel professional. There’s our ongoing work around T’s and C’s and making sure the outcome is workable, practical and equitable in implementation.
To all our shortlisted NTIA finalists – well done and congratulations. Can’t wait to see everyone on the 15th.
